Collaborations
Monday January 20, 2025
Brian Medavoy becomes the first person with back-to-back shoutouts because he gave me an idea for a theme: Collaborations.
I worked for Brian for about two years more than a decade ago, in one of the unhappiest times of my life, and he still calls me from time to time. I enjoy our professional relationship because it maintains a little Hollywood insider toe, but we’ve also developed a stronger personal relationship over the years. He’s a very outwardly sentimental guy, as is apparent in his writings (which I may or may not help with from time to time), and I’m a very inwardly one, so we click in sort of a funny way: Brian expresses his thoughts and feelings in big, expressive, often chaotic terms, intuits how I’m going to feel about the same things, and I help articulate a cogent, honest summation that typically serves as a good thought that’s worth publishing.
Brian is a capital-V Voice in Hollywood and has built his brand by preaching kindness, cooperation, karma, and, of course, collaboration. He was quite literally born into the business (his dad is the most powerful man you’ve never heard of) but still worked his way up from an agency mailroom to become a pioneer in talent management by actively collaborating with clients to produce their own content.
He’s probably the most vocal advocate of my writing and is the only person ever to call me a genius, which, like, okay, chill, but still very nice. He’s encouraged me to do more creative writing and even hooked me up with a manager a few years ago when I was in an extraordinarily rare writing torrent where I pumped out three screenplays in three months. He paid for professional coverage of one that — shocker — was fairly positive. Unfortunately, my issue has always been focus, and that creative hot streak just so happened to coincide with a work hot streak, and I just couldn’t juggle the two. Now, I’m so far removed from those drafts I don’t know how to dive back in.
But he was back in my ear the other day talking about how I need to find a way to collaborate with someone to give my ideas more legs. What I really need is someone to chain me to my desk and tell me to write and rewrite until one of these many projects I’ve started is polished and marketable, but I’m afraid to write that Craigslist ad.
Anyway, here’s to the many collaborators in our lives, be they our spouses, coworkers, friends, pets, internet strangers, or anyone else.
One Book: This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
I wasn’t a huge fan of this book — the experience felt like watching two people in a sniff-your-own-farts competition — but it’s pretty popular and is an excellent example of literary collaboration. (A Court of Thorns and Roses is objectively the worst book ever written and somehow it’s the most popular series in the world, so far be it from me to be the “arbiter of good taste,” as Brian’s partner once called me for having the nerve to suggest a project he commissioned was a miss. It was. It was putrid.)
The idea of This Is How You Lose the Time War is no doubt interesting. Agents Red and Blue are operatives of warring empires, each attempting to cripple the other by interfering across universes and timelines. Hence, Time War. Each of these cybernetic, futuristic agents is incredibly cunning and, once aware of one another’s presence in various theaters, they begin leaving notes to one another. What begins as the taunts of rivals, though, soon evolves into a flirtation and an almost sci-fi Romeo & Juliet story.
The book is written in the sequential point-of-view of Red and Blue; basically narrating an elaborate conversation across time. El-Mohtar (Blue) and Gladstone (Red) each pen one of the characters, so the book reads like two distinct points of view.
Really cool idea, really bold execution, it’s just so overwrought and purposefully occluded to make a fairly straightforward love story seem so much more complex.
One Art: Olympic Rings by Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat
Did you know that Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat collaborated kind of a lot between 1980 and 1986? Me neither!
Warhol’s biographer, Victor Bockris, claims that Basquiat sought out the more famous Warhol because he was literally looking to get famous. Basquiat’s well-known today as a sort of counterculture character, but apparently he just wanted to get rich like every other artist. (Can you blame him?)
Olympic Rings is a cool piece, though, because you can definitively see each artist’s contribution, mashed one atop the other in oppositional style.
One Lyric: “I will go where you lead/Always there in time of need/And when I lose my will/You'll be there to push me up the hill” - Marvin Gaye and Tami Terrell, “You’re All I Need to Get By”
Marv and Tam collaborated several times, most notably on the original “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”
You might have wondered why Tami Terrell isn’t an enduring Motown star the likes of Diana Ross or Gladys Knight. The reason is unfortunately tragic. She died of a brain tumor in 1970.
Terrell suffered from migraines and headaches for most of her life and was finally diagnosed after collapsing onstage while performing with Gaye in 1967. Three months later, she had surgery to remove the tumor and went right back to the studio to pump out “You’re All I Need to Get By” and another R&B chart-topper, “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing.”
She retired from performing in 1969 (which is why there appears to be no video record of her and Gaye ever performing “You’re All I Need to Get By) but not before pulling the notoriously shy Gaye out of his shell and on the track to becoming one of the greatest performers of his generation. In basically three years, she recorded two of the greatest R&B songs of all-time, three top 40 studio albums, and nine top 50 singles (plus several other hits) — all while living with a malignant brain tumor.
Acknowledge Tami Terrell. May she rest in peace.
Bonus Video: Marvin Gaye and Tami Terrell performing “You’re All I Need to Get By” on Johnny Carson
One Song: “Always on Time” by Ja Rule (ft. Ashanti)
Ja Rule and Ashanti have collaborated at least five times. None is as good as “You’re All I Need to Get By.”
One Hollywood: Inland Empire, Max
David Lynch died last week, and it feels suitable to celebrate him with this theme since he so frequently collaborated with the same crew and actors on his shows and movies. Jack Nance, Kyle McLachlan, Laura Dern, and Naomi Watts all appeared in multiple Lynch works and each has credited Lynch with giving them a major leg up in their careers.
If mainstream experimental isn’t a paradox, then that’s what David Lynch is. His artful weirdness translated to popular culture as many artists simply fail to do. “Twin Peaks,” “Mulholland Drive,” “The Elephant Man,” “Eraserhead” — they’re all pretty fucking weird. But none stinks of that esotericism and self-righteousness of so much high art, that Donna Tartt snootiness. All of his work is painstakingly empathetic of its characters and mindful of the human condition, in large part because Lynch trusted his collaborators so much.
2006’s “Inland Empire” was developed without a script and shot on a scene-by-scene basis with a general idea of what would happen: Actress Nikki Grace (Dern) would come apart at the seams as she sinks deeper and deeper into her most recent role. Dern, naturally, makes you feel that guilty blend of horror and amusement you get when driving by a car crash. It’s a Hollywood nightmare that, nearly 20 years old, looks and feels almost like a period piece. It’s not Lynch’s best work, but it is a great example of how great collaborators bring out the best in each other.
One Place: Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, Oslo, Norway
Completed in 2008, the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet was conceived as a public sculpture, with many artists invited to collaborate on its design. Sculptors Jorunn Sannes, Kalle Grude, and Kristian Blystad designed the marble plaza, and textile artists Astrid Løvaas and Kirsten Wagle designed the aluminum panel design of the building.
I don’t know anything about Norwegian opera and ballet but they’ve got a hell of a cool building to perform in.